{"id":494,"date":"2025-02-24T05:15:38","date_gmt":"2025-02-24T03:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spinningstories.uni-ak.ac.at\/?p=494"},"modified":"2026-04-10T13:42:45","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T11:42:45","slug":"cotton-spinning-demonstration-gumo-northern-ghana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinningstories.uni-ak.ac.at\/index.php\/2025\/02\/24\/cotton-spinning-demonstration-gumo-northern-ghana\/","title":{"rendered":"Cotton Spinning Demonstration \u2013 Gumo \/ Northern Region of Ghana"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Karin Altmann and Nana Opoku<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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In Gumo, we met with a collective of spinners who generously hosted a demonstration of their methods.<\/p>\n

The spinners first remove the cotton seeds by hand and then pluck a bow through the cotton to fluff it up. Next, they roll the fluffy cotton onto a stick, forming a rolag, which is attached to the spindle. Then the spinning starts. The spindle whorl is made of clay and has a good weight to maintain the spindle\u2019s speed of rotation. The spindle remains in a small calabash bowl or plate as it spins.<\/p>\n

Observing multiple women work side by side underscored the communal aspect of spinning and how such hands-on gatherings once served as a vehicle for storytelling, knowledge-sharing, and social cohesion.<\/p>\n

This encounter reminded us that cotton spinning is more than a craft\u2014it is a living cultural practice that thrives on collaboration and collective memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Karin Altmann and Nana Opoku In Gumo, we met with a collective of spinners who generously hosted a demonstration of their methods. The spinners first remove the cotton seeds by hand and then pluck a bow through the cotton to fluff it up. Next, they roll the fluffy cotton onto a stick, forming a rolag, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":762,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,19,9,10,16,36,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cotton","category-cotton-spinning","category-ghana","category-knowledge-transfer","category-research","category-spinning","category-textile-heritage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinningstories.uni-ak.ac.at\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinningstories.uni-ak.ac.at\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinningstories.uni-ak.ac.at\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinningstories.uni-ak.ac.at\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinningstories.uni-ak.ac.at\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/spinningstories.uni-ak.ac.at\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":839,"href":"https:\/\/spinningstories.uni-ak.ac.at\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions\/839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinningstories.uni-ak.ac.at\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinningstories.uni-ak.ac.at\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinningstories.uni-ak.ac.at\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinningstories.uni-ak.ac.at\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}